“But it didn’t work?”
“No,” she said. “ It didn’t work.”
“What time did you go out and when did you get back?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “And I don’t know where I went, either. I just drove.”
“Do you and your husband each have a car?” Ramsay asked.
She nodded.
“And you took your car?”
“Yes, of course. It was parked outside the house. James keeps his in the garage.”
“So you didn’t notice whether your husband’s car was there or not when you left the house?”
“Of course it was there. Why wouldn’t it be there? What would James be doing driving round in the middle of the night?”
“But you didn’t see it?” Ramsay asked.
“No,” she agreed. “ I didn’t see it.”
“Do you have any social contact with your husband’s colleagues?” Ramsay asked.
“As little as possible,” she said.
“You don’t get on with them?”
“Oh,” she said. “ I get on with them. I get on with most people. But when they’re all together they just talk about work and I find that tiresome. James is almost obsessive about the Express. I tell him he should delegate more and that he cares more about the bloody paper than he does about me, but it doesn’t make any difference. It still takes up all his time.”
“Does James discuss his staff with you?”
“He discusses everything with me,” she said angrily, but he doubted if she stopped thinking about herself long enough to listen.
“There’s a young reporter,” he said. “ Mary Raven. We’d like to talk to her, but she’s proving a little elusive. You have no idea where she might be?”
Stella smiled and seemed pleased with herself. There was little indication that she was jealous of the woman or that she resented her.
“No,” she said. “I don’t know where she is. She’s got something of a reputation, you know. She drinks a lot and I’m afraid she might be a bit promiscuous. James can be rather pompous and doesn’t like it. I tell him it does him good to have someone young in the place. It stops him getting boring.”
She looked at the clock again and this time Ramsay had no excuse to stay. He felt frustrated. He felt he had achieved nothing from the interview. He knew that Stella had been performing for him and that he could trust nothing she had said. At the door she stood with the same fixed smile on her face and waited until he had driven into the street. Then she shut the door behind her.
Just after Ramsay had turned into the road, he had to stop at a pedestrian crossing to allow an elderly lady across the road. It was only because of the delay that he saw Max Laidlaw’s car drive through the gates and park outside the Laidlaws’ house. The inspector turned into a side street so that he had a view of the front of the house. He saw Max knock on the door and Stella answer it. She was obviously furious and in her anger she was very tall, very regal. She took something from Max’s hand and there was an exchange, possibly, thought Ramsay, an argument. Max turned and strode back to his car. He reversed it into the street at great speed; almost causing an accident, then drove off without noticing Ramsay’s car at all. Stella Laidlaw stood in the doorway watching the incident with a degree of satisfaction, posed as if for a photograph, framed by the buds of forsythia that grew on either side of it. Then she disappeared back into the house.
Before Ramsay could start his car, Stella ran out into the street, tying the belt of the full-length beige mackintosh as she went. She began to hurry towards the centre of the town. Ramsay waited for a few minutes, but she was walking so quickly that he was afraid he would lose her. He locked his car and began to follow her.
Chapter Eighteen
Max Laidlaw waited for two days after the phone call before making a decision to see Stella. It was a gesture of pride and independence, although he knew he would do what she wanted in the end. Even on Wednesday he waited until he had completed all of his house calls before driving to her house. Let her stew, he thought. She had caused him anxiety enough. He had hardly slept for two days. Judy’s endless questions, her reassurance, her persistence to know “the truth,” was wearing him out. You don’t really want the truth, he felt like saying. You want comfortable words, security, a well-behaved husband. The impulse to tell her everything had long gone.
On Tuesday the publicity surrounding Charlie Elliot’s death irritated him beyond reason. Everyone was talking about it; colleagues and patients regarded him as a source of gossip. Several times he tried to phone Mary Raven, but there was no reply, and he almost wept with frustration. He had come to believe that only in Mary’s company could he find peace. On Tuesday night, when Judy was asleep, he tried to phone Mary again, but although it was almost midnight there was still no reply, and he imagined her with another man, in terrible danger, arrested by the police.
The next day, Wednesday, his helplessness turned to aggression. From his weakness and his lack of power, which was illustrated by Stella’s ability to use him, grew a violent anger that acted like a drug. It stopped him from thinking clearly and prevented him from considering the options that had seemed to provide a way out earlier in the week. He wanted revenge for the sleepless nights of worry, the disruption to his family life, even for his own sense of guilt. Someone had to pay.
The first person to pay had been Judy. At her insistence, he had returned home for lunch and at first it was pleasant. The kitchen door into the garden was open and the twins were playing happily outside. The children’s voices and the birdsong and the mild spring sunshine relaxed him and he thought his worry had been unnecessary. He would help Stella once more, he thought, just once more, then it would all be over. But Judy began again to question him about his conversation with Alice on the evening of her death and he lost his temper.
“It’s none of your business,” he shouted. “None of your bloody business.”
The twins stopped their game and stared through the open door, fascinated by his anger. Judy cried and there was a humiliating scene as she put her arms around him, dripping tears all over his face.
“Please, Max,” she said. “I don’t care what you’ve done. I can handle anything. But I can’t take this silence. I want you to trust me.”
Then he turned on her. “You think I killed Alice,” he shouted. “Don’t you? How can I trust you when you think me capable of that? What about Charlie Elliot? Do you think I murdered him, too?”
“I don’t know,” she cried. “I really don’t know. I want to know where you were on Tuesday morning. I got up to see to the twins and you weren’t there. What am I supposed to think?”
“I’m a doctor,” he yelled. “I get called out in the middle of the night. You should be used to that by now.”
Then he left the house, only half hearing the voice behind him calling him to come back, begging him to talk to her. He was pleased that he was hurting her.
He had one house call to do, and to his surprise he completed it calmly and efficiently. It was only as he drove to the other side of Otterbridge that the sense of imminent violence returned and grew. He drove automatically because he knew the road well, and when he arrived at the Laidlaws’ house, it was with surprise, because he could not remember how he got there. He walked across the gravel, past the pool of crocuses, purple against the green of the lawn, and thumped on the door with his fist.
Stella opened the door immediately and he did not realise at first how angry she was. She looked quite cool and elegant, dressed in primrose yellow-a linen skirt and a fine woollen cardigan buttoned to her neck. Playing the part of the country lady again, he thought bitterly. If only her posh friends knew.